Great Britain has some of the most beautiful, appropriate and resilient housing in the world. The majority of this housing was built before 1940, was not designed by architects, and forms the backbone of our towns, villages and cities. In many ways, it used to be so easy: we built unselfconsciously, using local materials, customs and techniques – effortlessly forming our own vernacular.

Since the war however, almost all of the housing stock that we have produced has been substandard to the point that it has wrecked many of the towns and villages that had survived unscathed for generations. This was caused by poor planning policy and urban design, ideologically misguided architects and perhaps most importantly, the shortsighted selfishness of volume house builders who refuse to put good design before quick profit.

Most volume housing has not been designed by architects – but to a certain extent, our vernacular housing showed that it didn’t necessarily need to be. If we followed certain fundamental rules of thumb we could create decent, ordinary resilient houses that together formed a cohesive beauty greater than an a collection of individual buildings.